Baby Rebekah

As many of you know we have a new edition to our family. Little Rebekah Anne was born on March 17th (St. Patrick's Day). There was no kicking, screaming or crying when it comes to her birth. She was limp and not breathing well. During labor sometime she had apparently stooled inside Sarah complicating the delivery with what us medical folk call "meconium". At birth no stimulation is done in an attempt to allow the person recussitating the baby the opportunity to quickly intubate the baby and suction out that thick stool before the baby breathes. Just before Rebekah was to be intubated she took a huge deep breath of a mouth full of stool. Now this stool isn't full of bacteria and filth like an adult's would be, just primarily sloughed off cells and such that have accumulated in her bowels over her short life. When she did this she essentially plugged up many of her small airways with the stool. This caused her a great deal of difficulty with breathing. She was taken to the nursery where further assessment was made by the residents on duty and the staff pediatrician. The pediatrician was so concerned that he called and gave a heads up/got recommendations from the local neonatal intensive care unit. They decided to watch and see how she did on oxygen over the first few hours. Over these first few hours she had some difficulty but was slowly able to be weaned down on her oxygen (though she still required large percentages of oxygen). At this time she was started on antibiotics and blood cultures were drawn to evaluate for infection. Our little fighter continued to get better over the next 24 hours eventually not requiring any oxygen at all and finally on wednesday night her breathing had improved well enough that she didn't require continuous monitoring and could come to the room with us. She remained improved, blood cultures were negative, and on thursday evening we were able to take her home. Prior to discharge the pediatrician told us that someone was looking out for her because he hadn't seen many infants improve as quickly as she did. We thank the many of you out there who were praying for our little girl!

Since coming home Rebekah has been the sweetest thing. She is a happy child who loves to eat, sleep and look around the room. She doesn't cry much and is just a joy to have as a new edition to our family. From the pictures you can see that she already loves to smile. We look forward to keeping you all updated on our "wee one" (as Sarah's mother would say). I hope you enjoy the pictures, we should have some video up sometime soon.